Zimbabwe Spirals Downward
by Ian Mosley
Zimbabwe is becoming a truly amazing place, a living chamber of horrors. Just when you thought things hit rock bottom with a fuel shortage leaving most vehicles permanently parked, the insane dictator Robert Mugabe finds more ways to make his people more miserable, coming up with measures more bizarre and tyrannical than before.
As in most Third World dictatorships, the army in Zimbabwe was one of the few groups of people who got some kind of regular paycheck and at least some kind of food ration, which is more than average people are getting. Many of the soldiers in the army were keeping their families fed with their meager military allowance. Now Mugabe is starting to lay off his own military. It’s usually a bad move for a dictator to fire the men with the guns in their hands who keep him in power, but damned if Mugabe isn’t getting away with it –so far. Mugabe has now laid off 10,000 soldiers, or a quarter of his army of 40,000 men. (more…)